


word association

by calcelmo



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Daddy Kink, F/M, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:40:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23986936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calcelmo/pseuds/calcelmo
Summary: So if you’re feeling a little adventurous or want to freak out that new guy you’ve just started sleeping with, slip a “daddy” or two into your dirty talk repertoire. He’ll either jizz in 30 seconds with glee or you might have to stop and have a long, drawn out talk about your latent daddy issues. Either way, it’ll definitely shake things up.-Laura McNairy
Relationships: Ethan Winters/Mia Winters
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	word association

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing this to get rid of my writer's block on the piece I was writing... because I had writer's block. Blockception, if you will. 
> 
> https://askeethanweenters.tumblr.com/post/157730816751/incorrect-re7-part-1

Touch without fear, without seeking reassurance, but with singular determination, brought him back to reality for the first time in three years. 

He had assumed Mia might be clingy, desperate. _He_ certainly felt that way, although he pushed it down, down so he could give her whatever she needed. If that was respect, if that was tentative and permission-seeking- then it was okay. Ethan would never touch her again if it meant he didn't have to live without her.

As it was, they were looking at time. It took time to heal, and for the body to relearn that gentle touches may sometimes stay that way. They are not always the precursor to violence. Time passed and progress was made, with hours of therapy and SSRI cocktails. Mia found her way back into his arms, and more often than not they found peace tangled up together in the early hours of the morning.

Bitterness was Ethan's first mistake. It made him unreachable, but he didn't realize until it was staring him in the face. 

They entered the building together and separated on either side of the same corridor- Mia to the right, with Doctor O'Hagan, Ethan to the left, with Doctor Soley. The rooms were identical: white walls, white furniture, plush blue carpet. But what was discussed in those rooms was entirely different.

Ethan talked about pain. 

More specifically, the phantom pain that ingrained itself in his muscle memory, short-circuiting his brain by taking him back to the Baker ranch. 

The feeling of a serrated knife biting into the flesh of his cheek, sawing between his teeth and spilling blood from his gums. The blunt edge of a shovel forcing its way through his sinew and bone. The screwdriver lodged between the veins of his hand. His bones splintering as he was thrown down flights of stairs, mold and sawdust thick in the air and his lungs.

He talked about what it felt like to be chased. The way your body eventually shut down to fear, because if it didn't, you would go into cardiac arrest and drown in your own adrenaline. 

He talked about Jack, and realized he'd lowered his voice, because the Baker patriarch's ghost still haunted him and had taken permanent residence in his psyche.

But his therapist wasn't interested in Jack. He was interested in Mia. 

"What did it feel like when you thought you'd killed your wife?"

The question was unexpected. He opened his mouth to answer but hadn't even formed a response yet. He felt irrationally defensive. As if he was being accused. 

The truth was sobering. 

"It... didn't," he frowned. "I guess the reality hadn't set in."

"And what did it feel like when she attacked you?"

The words brought him back to the moment. The demonic rage in Mia's face as she brought the axe down on him again and again, his blood spraying across her face. Her screams.

While Ethan talked about pain, Mia talked about guilt. How she couldn't look at herself in the mirror, knowing what she'd done to her husband. That if she hadn't lied to him, if he hadn't come looking for her, he would be okay. He wouldn't be in physiotherapy, trying to regain the fine motor skills in the hand she'd severed. He wouldn't need to methodically organize their medication into neat little boxes just to get them through the day without spiraling. He wouldn't need to stay in long sleeves because the damage to his limbs was so disturbing to his clients and colleagues. He wouldn't need to treat his wife like his frightened child whose very life was a nightmare.

Their second mistake was that they never talked to each other. 

There were a handful of people on the Earth who knew what they'd been through, what it was like in that fucking madhouse. They suffered in their own respective bubbles of trauma, tiptoeing round each other, relearning how to touch without relearning how to _talk._

Ethan got home from work late. He told Mia he was going out for drinks with buddies, would she be okay on her own for a couple hours? And she said, _of course, baby, I'm happy you're getting out of the house._ And that made him feel like shit, because she _wasn't_ getting out of the house. Even the stairs down to the living room were sometimes daunting. 

Ethan's friends convinced him to tell them about Mia's disappearance. They'd supported him in the early days, when he could barely find the motivation to get out of bed, never mind socialize as if his wife wasn't missing, presumed dead or cheating. Eventually, they got sick of his moping. And he couldn't really blame them. He became a shell of his former self. He felt like without Mia, he was less than human. 

There weren't any lights on downstairs, so he assumed Mia went to bed early. It was cold and dark outside, the wind howling. He quietly set his keys on the table and made his way upstairs, steadily enough as he only had a couple of beers. He didn't want to imagine what kind of drunk he'd become, or what memories might resurface on a mix of alcohol and Zoloft.

Mia wasn't asleep, she was sitting up in bed, reading. He got closer to see what it was, and couldn't help but smile when he caught the title. 

_"Parenting Essentials,"_ he read aloud, amused. "Something you wanna tell me?"

She sighed and tossed the book unceremoniously to the floor. "Just passing the time. You know your mom gave me this? Kind of ironic."

Ethan laughed. "Well, yeah." He put his jacket over the back of the chair and leaned over to press a kiss to her lips. "I'm gonna shower."

"Wait," she said. She wrapped her arms round his neck and kissed him properly, with intent, and he pulled back in surprise.

"Do you want...?" 

He was always pretty useless at figuring out when she was down for sex, so he'd just let her initiate it. Since they'd reunited and come back home, they hadn't crossed that boundary. It was months before they even shared a bed again, because the nightmares were so bad, and they woke each other up from tossing and turning. 

"Yeah, I want," she whispered. She pulled him down on top of her, running her hands down his chest and up under his shirt to splay against his stomach. 

He wanted to go slow and careful with her. He wanted to make it so there was no pain, no discomfort, no rush or pressure. But Mia had other ideas, and he allowed himself to be swept away in her tide. She pulled off his t-shirt and pushed at his shoulders so she could flip their position and lay on him.

"Want me to turn the lights off?" she murmured, pressing a kiss to his collarbone. 

He looked up at her, kind of struck dumb with how fucking beautiful she was. He knew his face was messed up, especially where Jack had run it through with the knife. He knew the rest of him was worlds worse; skin marred with ugly, ridged scarring, parts of him sewn back together, parts of him disfigured. If Mia wanted to turn off the lights so she didn't have to look at that, he'd understand. But the marks on her body didn't put him off in the slightest.

"No. I wanna see you. If that's okay."

Mia smiled at him. She started unbuttoning her pajama shirt, and his hands came up to cup her breasts while they kissed some more, heated now. He hadn't really started to miss sex yet, but having her like this, grinding down on his dick while she ran her tongue over his teeth, he remembered just how good she was.

She shifted off him for a second so he could take the rest of his clothes off, and when she moved back, his cock rubbed up against her slit. She let out a gasp and he grabbed her hips so he could rut against her, feeling how slick she was.

"Should I- get a condom," he panted against her shoulder, pushing her hair back out of her face and to the back of her neck.

Mia shook her head. "Want to feel you."

Honest to God, it was three fucking _years_ since Ethan last got laid. If Mia expected him to last more than ten seconds she was going to need to stop saying shit like that. She took the base of his dick in her hand and lowered herself down till he slipped inside of her. 

_"Fuck,_ Mia," he whispered reverently. She laughed a little, hiding her face in the crook of his shoulder while he pumped his hips slowly, burying his cock inside her. Her breaths were shallow and hitching against his neck, his arms circled tight around her. As mindlessly turned on as he was, he also felt so damn grateful that they got to be this close to each other again. 

Ethan tried to be gentle, both for her sake and because if he went any faster this would all be over embarrassingly quickly, but she urged him on by tangling her fingers in his hair and meeting his slow thrusts with more urgency. He fucked into her harder, tightening his grip around her middle. He was so close, so close already, spurred on by the gorgeous noises she made.

Then it all went to shit, because Mia said, "Daddy,", and Ethan- Ethan _came inside of her,_ as if it was on command- while also experiencing the worst kind of flashback involving the last person on Earth he wanted to think about during sex.

He was angry. Because if anyone knew the connotations of that word, it was Mia, and it wasn't fair to just spring it on him like that. In his hurt, he would have distanced himself from her. Pulled out and gone to get that shower he'd been thinking about. But he couldn't move. He wasn't really in the moment, he was somewhere... maybe the guest room, with Jack hot on his heels screaming _"Come to Daddy!"_ over the screeching roar of his chainsaw. 

Mia had to understand that he couldn't hear that word without thinking about Jack, the same way he couldn't hear _Jack_ saying that word without thinking about his father. And that was just... a can of worms that people wanted to rip open and jam down his fucking throat.

"Ethan," Mia whispered, as his dick softened inside her.

He snapped out of it enough to pull out and stumble off to the bathroom. He locked himself in there because he just couldn't face her right now. He slid down the wall, buck naked, scrubbing his hands roughly over his eyes. Jesus, fuck. He could hear Jack laughing at him, maniacal cackling that echoed off the tiled walls.

Maybe he'd have to face up to the fact that they were never going to be okay. They would never be able to put the past behind them.

Ethan wanted to know _why_ she'd said that. On all the multiple occasions they'd had sex, Mia had never brought that up. She'd never even hinted at it; or if she had, Ethan had been oblivious. He didn't get why she would say it, when it only brought up memories of raw terror and pain. 

_The same reason you got off to it, boy,_ said a voice in the back of his head, which sounded like an unhinged Lousiana drunk. 

He felt a little sick. 

There was a light tap at the door.

"Ethan, I'm so sorry," Mia whispered, muffled through the barrier between them. There was a wavering note to her it, like she'd been crying.

He swallowed, leaned his head back against the tiles with a little more force than he'd intended. "Why'd you say that, Mia?" he asked. He sounded hoarse.

She paused. He imagined her mirroring his position with her head resting against the door, rubbing at her arms because she was cold. 

"I... I don't know. It just felt like..." She trailed off. "I thought you liked it."

He expected to bristle at the accusation, but instead he deflated. While it had brought a flood of memories and emotions he'd rather keep locked away, there was no denying his physical reaction to it, which was drying on the inside of Mia's thighs.

The thought made him man the fuck up and open the door. Startled, she shifted out the way and got to her feet. He felt uncomfortable with his state of undress, as if she could see right through his skin to the hollowness inside.

"You know why that was fucked up, right," he said, not phrasing it as a question.

Mia nodded, looking away. He felt a pang of regret in his chest. He didn't want her to be ashamed; just give him a little warning.

He cleared his throat. "Maybe... maybe I did like it. But we have to talk these things through first."

"You're right. I'm sorry, baby."

He put his hands on her shoulders, soothing her, and then cupped her face. "I'll be whatever you want me to be."

"Not him," she said fiercely, curling her fingers round his wrists, one thumb tracing the circle of thick scarring around his left arm. "Never him."

"I know. I know."

She just wanted to be taken care of. That was okay. He'd been doing that since forever. 


End file.
